IP Transition Must Advance, CES Panel Says | USTelecom: Meanwhile, AT&T has been eager to begin moving forward with the IP transition and last year proposed that the Federal Communications Commission begin trials to test the effects of a full network transition, said Bob Quinn, AT&T senior vice president-federal regulatory. The role for FCC is to oversee the "turning off" of the old network, Quinn said. "There will be an enormous amount of policy concerns involved in doing this, and we need to figure out what this new world will look like."
"We've reached the point where the IP network is superior to the old switched network," said Internet analyst and author Larry Downes. "The policy issue is what do we do about people who have not yet made the switch?"
There's also the issue of telephone companies that have not yet changed out their old POTS copper cable plants to fiber optic capable of supporting data and video as well as voice services using voice over Internet protocol (VOIP). This isn't only about consumers who haven't made the transition off wireline POTS for premises service. For many, they don't really have a choice for wireline-delivered voice service.
AT&T and other telcos are hoping consumers will be satisfied with using mobile wireless service for both voice and Internet access since they don't plan to invest in fiber to the premise (FTTP) infrastructure to replace their obsolete copper networks that cannot serve many homes and businesses due to technological limitations. Communities can offer their residents a far better option by building municipal or consumer telecommunications cooperative owned and operated FTTP networks instead of leaving their residents relegated to supbar mobile wireless services that can't provide adequate bandwidth and value.
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